Sharif Digital Repository

The fracture mechanism of hybrid iPP-EPR-GF composites has been studied by notched Charpy, three- and four-point bending fracture tests. The results of impact tests illustrate that increasing both temperature and EPR/GF ratio increases the impact energy of iPP-EPR-GF. Indeed, with increasing temperature, a brittle, ductile, transition temperature (BDTT) occurs. The results of a three-point bending test show that fracture toughness (KIC) can be improved by addition of both GF and EPR. Since the trend in the fracture toughness values is close to what would be expected by the rule of blends, it can be concluded that the use of both GF and EPR has no significant synergistic effect on toughening.... 

The fracture mechanism of isotactic polypropylene has been studied by three- and four-point bending tests. The result of three-point bending test shows that a wide spread damage zone is present in front of the notch. Looking in more detail via cross-polarised light shows the evidence of birefringence in the stress-whitened zone. Increasing the applied load causes it to spread out the stress-whitened zone. Then the craze-like features are nucleated inside the stress-whitened region. The result of four-point bending test shows that craze-like damage appears in front of pre-crack and its propagation is dictated by spherulite microstructure. © 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved  

Mechanical characterization of fractures, i.e., identifying their characteristic parameters such as energy release rate, is crucial to assess the safety and stability of structural members. This is generally achieved using a combination of finite element analysis and optimization. Machine learning models are increasingly used to characterize engineering problems. While such models have shown impressive performance on smooth data, their performance diminishes significantly on data with discontinuities and sharp gradients. For fractures, this issue is more severe due to the singular solutions in the vicinity of the fracture tips. To resolve this difficulty, leveraging classical fracture... 

Effects of microstructure and texture, before and after phase transformation, on the anisotropy of the mechanical properties and fracture behaviors of commercially pure titanium were studied. Before phase transformation, due to the split distribution of basal texture the activation of different deformation systems led to mechanical properties anisotropy. Although the fracture mechanism in both specimens was voids nucleation, growth and coalescence, the shape, size and distribution of dimples were affected by active deformation systems. However, after phase transformation, basal plains in most grains were aligned with the transverse direction. This texture component led to the activation and... 

In the present work, failure analysis of an automatic coupler in railway carriages which failed in service and caused derailment, was carried out. An evaluation of the failed coupler was undertaken to assess its integrity, including visual examination, photo documentation, fractography, chemical analysis, hardness measurement, tensile and charpy impact testing and microstructural characterization. Results show that some casting defects (e.g. mis-run, cold lap, hot crack and inclusion) resulted in poor mechanical properties. Mis-runs were also responsible for fatigue crack nucleation from two different locations. Beach marks can be observed on the fracture surface. According to the results of... 

In this paper, a polygonal finite element method is presented for crack growth simulation with minimum remeshing. A local polygonal mesh strategy is performed employing polygonal finite element method to model the crack propagation. In order to model the singular crack tip fields, the convex and concave polygonal elements are modified based on the singular quarter point isoparametric concept that improves the accuracy of the stress intensity factors. Numerical simulations are performed to demonstrate the efficiency of various polygonal shape functions, including the Wachspress, metric, Laplace and mean value shape functions, in modeling the crack tip fields. Eventually, analogy of the... 

In this paper we first obtain the order of stress singularity for a dynamically propagating self-affine fractal crack. We then show that there is always an upper bound to roughness, i.e. a propagating fractal crack reaches a terminal roughness. We then study the phenomenon of reaching a terminal velocity. Assuming that propagation of a fractal crack is discrete, we predict its terminal velocity using an asymptotic energy balance argument. In particular, we show that the limiting crack speed is a material-dependent fraction of the corresponding Rayleigh wave speed  

In this research, an extended finite element model has been investigated. Investigation of opening and closure stress always has been one of the difficult parameters to analysis of results; therefore, the utilization of finite element methods would be a good and logical alternative for this purpose. In addition, linear elastic fracture criteria are used for validation of numerical results from the simulation. In this work, a detailed analysis of the influence of different parameters in the results of a specific specimen with a semi-elliptical tooling groove in terms of closure and opening stress is presented, and the impact of optimum element size in fracture characteristic in various load... 

Progressive building collapse occurs when failure of a structural component leads to the failure and collapse of surrounding members, possibly promoting additional failure. Global system collapse will occur if the damaged system is unable to reach a new static equilibrium configuration. The most common type of primary failure which led to the progressive collapse phenomenon, is the sudden removal of a column by various factors. In this study, a method is proposed to prevent progressive collapse phenomena in structures subjected to removal of a single column. A vierendeel peripheral frame at roof level is used to redistribute the removed column’s load on other columns of the structure. For... 

In this paper the equation of motion and corresponding boundary conditions has been developed for forced bending vibration analysis of a beam with an open edge crack. A uniform Euler-Bernoulli beam and the Hamilton principle have been used in this research. The natural frequencies and the forced response of this beam have been obtained using the new developed model in conjunction with the Galerkin projection method. The crack has been modeled as a continuous disturbance function in displacement filed which could be obtained from fracture mechanics. The results show that the first natural frequency will reduce when the crack depth ratio increases. Also the rate of this reduction depends on... 

Different architectures of layered laminates comprising two exterior layers of Al-Mg-Si/SiC metal matrix composite and an Al1050 ductile interlayer were fabricated by means of hot roll-bonding with applying different strains of εr = 39%, 51%, and 63%. For monolithics production, ceramic particulate reinforcement contents of 0, 5, 10, and 15 vol% were utilized. The aim of introducing ductile metal interlayer was to compensate the low toughness of composite layers and consequently enhancement of damage tolerance of bundled structures along with prevention of their catastrophic failure through activation of extrinsic toughening mechanism. Effects of architectural characteristics and fabrication...